Proun: a beautiful, pick-your-price PC racer that you need to play

Proun is a PC racing game that puts a sphere on a stretched cylinder and …

The music in Proun is kind of annoying. There, I have found something negative to say about the game. My job here is done.

Proun is an odd duck: a PC release that can you play for free—or you can pay whatever you want to unlock an extra track—and it looks like nothing else currently on the market. You play a sphere that's attached to a very long cylinder, and you race across it, moving back and forth to avoid obstacles in your path. That's the entirety of the game, and you can play each track in a matter of minutes. The real joy comes in unlocking the faster speeds and seeing just how quickly you can react. We've embedded a video below—you're going to want to see this game in action.

Proun

What's striking about Proun is how it makes you feel. The game is epic without being loud, it's sleek without being cold, and it's joyful without being cute. It's a happy game that's not afraid to bloody your nose if you're not paying attention. The tracks feel both expertly designed and effortless.

This looks exactly like all the 100s (1000s?) of tunnel racers except with the tunnel inverted. You're still going forward and can rotate around a circle to avoid obstacles. It is more aesthetically pleasing to have the camera outside the tube for a change.

that said these are excellent games that are really beautiful to play (if a little trippy after a while)

SpeedX was the first thing I thought of as well, particularly since the white-with-black-gridlines tunnel you move through in SpeedX does invert itself from time to time, makng it even more like this game at those points.

There was an article about this game and Joost van Dongen (its creator) in nrc.next (a Dutch newspaper) a few weeks ago. Joost set out to create a game all by himself. He nearly succeeded; as the project had already cost him such a long time, he asked Arno Landsbergen to create the soundtrack in the end. Everything else was created singlehandedly by Joost van Dongen.

I dropped 5 bones on this cause I absolutely love the idea of pay what you want games.

As far as the game goes it's pretty fun but the re-playability is a bit lacking. I found the difficulty leap (simply ramps up the speed) from the 2nd difficulty to the 3rd a steep one, and with only 3 levels I don't see myself sinking much more time into this. You can create your own or dl user created tracks from the site it claims in-game but I haven't bothered trying.

Damn. I played a game on the Risc PC (or possibly A5000) in the 1990s that had a similar drive-around-the-outside-of-a-pipe-dodging-things feel about it, although it was set in space and you were a bit less marbly. And the annoying thing is that I can't remember what it was called (and my Google Fu has failed), possibly because I only ever played the demo. I look forward to giving it a go, anyway.

What's so awesome, and something I love, is that the 3D effect and graphics are immersive and gorgeous, even though there's really minimal on-screen geometry or texture mapping. I *love* games that use engines like this.

This is like a 3D version of Audiosurf, only without the ability to import any song you have. That might be a good thing, but I would be even more interested if the modding tools made for this were user-friendly enough that I could make a track without memorizing a book of documentation.

Then there is the issue with copyright, and lack of a central track sharing server.

Looks pretty interesting, Ill play it. I also love the business strategy, theyve earned my respect. And given the limitations of independent developers, it looks like they really hit a home-run with this.